Superman's Voice...

This may be too esoteric to explain in a written blog entry, but something I heard cracked me up and I have to give it a try.

I downloaded some old (1940's) Superman radio serials on iTunes, and I've been having a ball listening to them (they're free at "Old Time Radio Hour," if anyone's interested). In these old episodes Bud Collyer uses two distinct voices -- a more reasonable, higher-pitched 40's-businessman voice for Clark Kent and a lower, more serious voice for Superman. You'll hear things like "this looks like a job FOR SUPERMAN."

So in the episode I was listening to recently, Clark, Lois Lane and another character were trapped in an old mine by a cave in. Clark couldn't move away the rocks with them standing there without giving away his identity, even though they had no light and it was pitch black dark in the mine. So Clark concocts some ruse to get the other folks to go off elsewhere in the mine, and then starts clearing enough rubble away for them to get through.

He's alone, presumably still dressed as Clark and talking to himself out loud.

And he says, "now that they're gone, I can clear these rocks away AS SUPERMAN." And there are a few minutes as he narrates his actions to himself -- "A FEW MORE... THERE -- THAT SHOULD GET IT" -- all in the Superman voice. Then in the Clark voice: "now I just have to wait for the others to return and explain the rubble wasn't as firmly in place as we'd thought..."

I guess in 40's radio, the closest thing they had to a special effect was the wonderful vocal talent of Bud Collyer (who voiced Superman from the 40's radio show through Saturday morning cartoons in the 60's), but it cracks me up thinking about this man alone in a cave in street clothes changing his voice so he can talk to himself heroically about what he's doing.

 Alone. By himself.

Hah. Here's a page with a .wav file of Bud Collyer doing both voices in one sentence.